


sugar drunk high

by snowborn



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drug Use, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Power Dynamics, Sansa and Dany are runway models, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Yearning, this is mainly sansa/dany, warning, with minor jon/dany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23419330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowborn/pseuds/snowborn
Summary: Sansa Stark wasn't cut out for big girl games.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sansa Stark & Margaery Tyrell, Sansa Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	sugar drunk high

**Author's Note:**

> UM what is this? i don't know. i was looking at some jacquemus ss19 and thus this was born. enjoy!

The world holds its breath.

The petite model’s silver-white hair has been left loose and curling down her back. Probably a stylistic choice made by Olenna herself. The result is gorgeous.

She is effulgent, infused with sunlight.

Dressed in a tiny gossamer slip that elongates her frame, she commands the runway with a presence that puts everyone to shame. The blue of her dress makes her eyes appear even more vibrant in her skull.

 _Too elegant to be real_ , someone had written in an article about her. Sansa was inclined to agree.

Daenerys reaches the end of the catwalk, tilting her chin to face the crowd. These are her people, whose adoration brings her euphoria. Their upturned faces and bright eyes serenade her.

The weight of her family’s legacy had been thrust upon her so abruptly, but she carries it with surprising ease. It has become a crown upon her head. She soaks in their love. She deserves it. On stage, she becomes divine.

The crowd screams for her. Sansa’s heart skips as she watches the furor Daenerys has inspired. What Daenerys has, she craves. Sansa has walked in four of Olenna’s shows, the youngest model ever to do so, but she has never seen the crowd so earnest, so desperate.

All for this one small girl.

“Sansa, darling, you’re almost up.” Margaery swishes past, a blur of green silk. She smells of rosewater and cigarette smoke. She pauses to watch Daenerys walk back, her lips quirked. “Amazing, isn’t she? Grandmother handpicked her to open the show.”

The lights glance off the cross pendant around Daenerys’s neck, blinding Sansa.

When Daenerys floats past without a glance in her direction, Sansa is close enough to see the sweat glistening on her milk-pale skin. The urge to reach out and taste it flits through her mind as quickly as it appears.

Her hands barely tremble when she appears on the runway.

Before Olenna Tyrell, Daenerys was the most sought after model in Essos.

Now, she’s the most sought after model in the world.

Still, she feels alone, even surrounded by people. Her life has been a string of tragedies, knotted and gnarled, though somehow she has survived despite it all.

The girls are friendly enough. While none of them are Missandei, they invite her to events long after Olenna’s summer season, no matter how little attention she gives them.

On nights like tonight, she goes.

They drag her to a club, grimy and full of smoke. The girls titter and squeal as they dance, bodies meshing in ecstatic pleasure. Margaery and Arianne dig their nails into each other’s hips, tangling together like ivy.

Beside her, Sansa Stark sips at a vodka soda.

“Care for a smoke?”

Sansa looks like a deer in headlights. They’ve never spoken directly before, but their thighs are so close they may as well be touching.

“I’m trying to quit,” she says finally.

Daenerys tilts her head, studying her with shrewd violet eyes, then shrugs and lights up a cigarette.

“Suit yourself, princess.”

Sansa bites at her straw. The purple and blue haze drifts over Daenerys, partially veiling her in shadow. The plush pout of Daenerys’s red lips around the cigarette makes Sansa’s mouth dry. She sucks up the alcohol until her throat burns. Until ice rattles in the glass.

Sansa’s hands twitch. She wants to put her fingers in the hollows of Daenerys’s cheeks and _squeeze_.

Sansa leans against the wall. She is halfway through her third glass of champagne. Margaery chatters with agents who have come to sniff around them, but Sansa catches a gleam of silver hair. Interestingly enough, her plus one had disappeared some time ago only to resurface beside Daenerys.

They have been glued to each other all night.

For a brief second, Sansa regrets bringing Jon. It was his turn to escort her tonight. She hated coming to these events alone. This wouldn’t have happened if she had brought Arya or Robb.

Well. It might have happened with Robb, but it was definitely happening with Jon.

“Sansa, are you moping right now?” Margaery says. “We’re at a party!”

Sansa huffs. “I’m not moping.”

“Honey, you look like someone’s taken your favorite toy. Arianne’s got a little pick-me-up at the after party, if you’re interested.”

“I am not.”

Margaery leans in. Her breath reeks of vodka cranberry. “You know, you should just tell Daenerys you like her. Save you both the trouble.”

How does she tell Margaery that it feels like more than a simple crush? That one look from Daenerys and she’d be on her knees, kissing her feet? How does she explain the burning feeling in her chest when she watches Daenerys on the runway, how does she say that she wants her and wants to be her?

“But I don’t like her.”

She downs the rest of her champagne, idly wondering if she should take up her offer. She’s been clean for two months with some strong-arming from Arya, but the alcohol combined with her own mood is making the offer seem more than a little tempting.

Maybe tonight she’ll get so high she won’t think about Daenerys or how she wants to wrap her hands around her throat. Maybe she’ll black out and she won’t have to agonize about her fucking silver hair anymore.

Margaery offers her a sympathetic look as Jon emerges from the crowd, Daenerys clutching his arm.

“You didn’t tell me your cousin was so funny,” Daenerys says, breathless. Even flushed and sweaty, she is ethereal.

Sansa smiles wanly, tempering the bubbling in her chest. “He has his moments.”

“Thanks for bringing me tonight, Sans,” Jon says warmly. “I haven’t had this much fun in ages.”

He looks happier than she has ever seen him, face flushed and eyes crinkled deeply at the corners. As someone so somber, she had almost forgotten the sound of his laugh.

Steeling herself, Sansa forces a softer, more sincere smile. “Well, don’t let me stop you. Marge and I are going to the after party.”

“Are you sure? I want to make sure you get home safe,” Jon says, ever the bloody hero. “I can escort you there –”

Sansa feels herself flushing deeper, the champagne permeating her system. She wants to snap at him, tell him to fuck off and stay far away from Daenerys because she wanted her first –

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Jon Snow,” Margaery intervenes, voice remarkably steady for someone with four vodka cranberries in her system. “Sansa can spend the night with me.”

Jon looks to Sansa, unimpressed. Sansa rolls her eyes.

“I’ll be fine.” Sansa makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Go, have fun! I’ll stay with Marge tonight. Make sure Daenerys gets home safe.”

She feels the burning in her eyes at the look of hunger Daenerys directs at Jon. Gods, she could use a cigarette or three. She should have just stayed home, then Daenerys never would have met Jon, and Sansa wouldn’t be spiraling into chaos.

Daenerys smiles, but her eyes are inscrutable.

“Be safe, princess.”

It sounds like poison from her mouth. Forever the princess, never the queen.

They disappear into the crowd once more, and she turns to Margaery, her palms sweaty as she presses them into the gold silk of her dress.

“Let’s go,” she breathes.

When she and Margaery are two lines deep at a mansion in the hills of King’s Landing, her phone vibrates on the marble counter.

 _Taking her home_ , Jon texts. _Hope you’re safe_.

She bites back the urge to toss her phone in the toilet. Margaery’s laugh reverberates in her ears and sends them ringing. The high hasn’t swallowed her yet, leaving her feeling muddled and wanting.

Her mind flickers through the events of the night, haunted by a sheet of silver hair and bright eyes, the curve of her lips.

“Coming, Sansa?”

If only her siblings could see her now.

Daenerys surveys the room one last time, searching for a scrap of lace. Jon’s bedroom is mercifully neat, making it easy for her to find the articles of clothing he had flung around last night, but she cannot seem to find her underwear.

She chalks it up as a loss, writes a quick note to Jon with a ton of X’s and O’s, and tiptoes out of the room. Her legs ache, drawing her back into the recent memory of Jon pushing her legs over her head as he fucked her into his mattress.

He was so sweet and so warm, and the high he gave her was more intoxicating than any drug she’d ever done. He had made her feel so wanted, not how an audience wanted her, but how a person wanted her. It would be so easy to tangle herself in his arms and never leave, to sit down and learn how to commit for once.

She tells herself that these excuses are real reasons, that if she didn’t have somewhere else to be, she would stay.

The guilt settling in her stomach tells her otherwise.

When she reaches the living room, a flash of red hair from the kitchen counter catches her eye. She clears her throat.

Sansa Stark turns, startled, and almost drops her coffee cup.

“I let myself in.” There’s sweat beading on Sansa’s temples, and she looks pallid. “I thought he brought you home.”

“We got sidetracked,” Daenerys says breezily, sweeping past her to put on a fresh pot of coffee with Jon’s ancient coffee machine. The thing whirs to life, the only sound in the stilted silence.

Sansa bows her head, struggling to tamp down on how the wound inside of her seems to spread and fester like something rotten.

“He’s like my brother, you know.”

“Oh.” Daenerys hums, unlit cigarette pressed between her chapped lips. “Mind if I –”

“You can’t smoke in here,” Sansa snaps, hands tightening around the cup. “And you can’t fuck my family.”

A dangerous smile spreads across Daenerys’s features.

“What are you going to do about it, princess?” Daenerys’s eyes burn into her own as her fingers flick over the neon pink lighter, producing a flame that lights the end of her cigarette. She takes a long drag, cheeks hollowing out sharply before she blows the blessed acrid smoke right into Sansa’s face.

Sansa Stark wasn’t built for big girl games. Daenerys can see right through to the soft, sweet heart of her and she knows she can’t handle what comes after. She leans in, their noses almost touching. There is an inexplicable hardness behind the blue of Sansa’s red-rimmed eyes, a thread of steel that makes her want to press her like a bruise.

“That’s what I thought,” Daenerys says, tilting her head as if to challenge her.

Sansa looks away first.

“Be a dear and tell Jon I’ll come collect my panties later, won’t you?” Daenerys watches the emotions flit across Sansa’s pretty face until it settles on strained neutrality, her eyebrows drawn. She retreats into herself, cowed into submission by the tiny girl before her.

Sansa sits at the counter long after her coffee has gone cold, haunted by the trail of smoke Daenerys leaves in her wake.

(The first time they meet, Daenerys is draped in silk so thin Sansa can see the shape of her breasts.

Sansa’s mouth is dry. Four weeks without nicotine, but she still can’t tell if it’s because of the heat or the woman in front of her.

“You’re beautiful,” Sansa blurts. She can feel the embarrassing flush that spreads across her cheeks and down to her chest, blotchy and angry like a rash.

Daenerys smiles and tilts her head, watching her with catlike eyes. It’s not the first time she’s heard that and it won’t be the last.

Still, it sounds different coming from Sansa Stark’s lips. Almost reverent.)

“You’re not eating again.”

Sansa pulls the duvet over her head in the hopes that Arya will get the message to leave her the fuck alone. Unfortunately for her, the famed Stark stubbornness runs strongest within her sister, so she feels the blanket ripped away from her.

“Get up, Sans.” The sunlight streams into her room from the blinds she had tugged open, casting her sister in bright gold. She is small and beautiful. Sansa feels a pang of guilt at all the times she had ever told her otherwise.

Sansa curls away from Arya’s voice.

“I’m eating just fine,” she says into her pillow. “Go away.”

Arya’s voice is soft and pleading, a far cry from the usual anger and frustration she’s used to dealing with.

“Please, Sans. Jon told me about the party.” The mattress dips slightly. Arya’s small hand lands on her ankle.

Sansa can feel the bitterness prickling in her chest, the resentment threatening to boil over.

“Jon doesn’t know shit,” she says bitterly.

“He knows that you drank a lot that night. Why didn't you call?”

Because it wouldn't have mattered, Sansa wants to say. Because in the world she lives and thrives in, she needs an escape. Especially now that world is firmly centered around Daenerys Targaryen.

“Didn’t want to be a bother.”

A sigh. “Are you using again?”

The dam breaks. Sansa shoots up, fingers digging into the duvet, almost baring her teeth. Arya’s eyes grow round, then hard like marbles. She knows she looks a fright, considering she hasn't left her bed in who knows how long and her arms are shaking with the effort of holding herself up. Since her night of freedom with Margaery, her clean streak had effectively been broken.

“So what if I was? You’ll send me to rehab to rot again?” She hurls the words like knives, hoping to stick Arya so she’ll finally leave.

“I’ll send you to rehab as many times as you need,” Arya bites out, struggling to be patient. “I’m not letting you self destruct.”

“Fuck off.”

Arya’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Really? That’s how we’re gonna do this?”

“Leave, Arya.”

“I’m not –”

Sansa’s hands move of their own accord, knocking Arya off the bed and onto the floor. Arya recovers quickly, but Sansa dodges her and locks herself in the adjoining bathroom, turning on all the faucets to drown out Arya’s pounding fists and shrill voice.

She stares at herself in the mirror, taking in the angry set of her mouth and the rigid lines of her gaunt face.

Before she realizes it, her fist makes contact with the mirror. Her mind barely registers the blood, eyes tracing the red in the cracks of the glass. Clutching her hand, she sinks to the floor before the first sob bursts from her lips.

How ironic, she thinks, that she used to call Arya ugly when the real ugliness resided inside of her all along.

It seems like hours later that there is finally quiet on the other side of the door. Sansa shuts off the water, creeping back out into her bedroom on trembling legs.

Arya is gone.

Daenerys lights her second cigarette of the day as she leaves the set, her sunglasses firmly over her eyes. It was quick work, an editorial shoot for a magazine, and she was out in time for lunch but she wasn’t hungry.

The pit in her stomach curbed her appetite.

Sansa Stark had been booked for the same shoot and hadn’t shown up. The girl had a reputation for being incredibly punctual and put together, so her unexplained absence was jarring. Daenerys had resolved not to let it bother her, but somehow the redhead had wormed her way into her brain.

There was something fascinating about the way Sansa Stark looked at her like she was always the only woman in the room.

With a short huff, she scrolls through her phone to text Jon.

 _Heard from your cousin lately?_ _She didn’t show up to our shoot_ , she texts.

She receives no reply, but Jon calls forty minutes later as she’s getting on the subway.

“Hey, Dany.” His voice is partially muffled, like his hand is covering the speaker. “Hold on a sec.”

Daenerys hums in response as she weaves through the mass of bodies to find a place to stand. She shifts the phone to her other ear as she reaches up to grip the railing strap.

“Okay, I’m back,” Jon says quietly. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

A sigh. “We took Sansa to rehab. We, meaning her siblings and me. We’ve had a rough few days.”

Daenerys blinks, losing her footing as the train takes off. She nearly drops her phone on the man sitting in front of her, muttering a quick apology before righting herself.

“Is everything alright?” And it’s all she can do to hold herself together as Jon’s voice drones on in her ear, detailing Sansa Stark’s spiral into self-destruction.

It is a crisp day in September when Sansa finds herself outside on a park bench, watching the reddening leaves fall and twirl with the wind. There is some semblance of peace in watching the ducks swim across the pond, the autumn breeze gently rippling the water.

After her discharge from the facility Arya had insisted on temporarily moving in with her, just so she could help her get back on her feet. This quickly became permanent, which would have bothered Sansa before, but her flat has more space than she ever knew what to do with, and there is more than enough room for the both of them.

For all that Sansa wants to complain about not needing a babysitter, she feels a twinge of something warm in her chest whenever she walks along her once-barren hallway, now littered with silly pictures of her and her family, whenever she sees Arya frowning and hunched over the kitchen counter, brandishing her previously-unused cookware like a weapon.

On Sundays Robb and Jon come over for brunch, and they make full use of her spacious kitchen, cooking up a traditional English breakfast complete with tea, and she had almost forgotten how it felt to have someone make her tea perfectly, just the way she liked it.

Her career hadn’t been the same, understandably. Though her trials weren’t as publicized as they could have been, many in the industry did not want to take their chances with someone they deemed so fragile. It was the last thing she had, the last thing she could control, and it took all of her resolve to step away from it.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.

Margaery is one of the rare few in the industry who still visit her anymore. She brings over books and bouquets of flowers to ‘liven up the space,’ as she says, and then she’ll change into her pajamas to marathon movies with her all day. She almost always comes to brunch, and she drinks orange juice out of a crystal flute and eyes Robb like she wants to eat him, and it’s like they never needed alcohol to have fun in the first place.

It’s not a quick fix. These things never are. But Sansa feels the gaping emptiness inside her has been plugged with love and sewn shut, something she never thought would be possible, and it makes her breathe a little easier.

“Mind if I sit here?” a clear voice says to her right, and she doesn’t have time to answer before Daenerys Targaryen slides onto the bench beside her, bundled in a thick knit beanie and a large peacoat. Sansa recognizes the scarf haphazardly tugged around her neck as one of Jon’s. She looks very clearly like someone experiencing their first autumn in Westeros, but Sansa can’t help but to feel that she fits right in.

“Robb and Jon didn’t need your help with the roast this time?” Sansa asks.

“I figured they could manage on their own without setting the place on fire,” Daenerys replies, violet eyes twinkling. “I left Arya in charge.”

This is what they do now, and it’s confusing, but Daenerys visits frequently and sometimes they find themselves alone together and most of the time they don’t need words. From the corner of her eye Sansa watches Daenerys’s fingers twitch in search for a cigarette that isn’t there. Instead she shoves her hands in her pockets.

“It’s bloody cold out,” Daenerys continues, blowing out a harsh breath. “If I’d have known it was like this, I would’ve stayed in Essos.”

 _If you’d have stayed in Essos, we never would have met_ , Sansa thinks. And what a blessing and a curse that would have been.

“I told you, no one survives here without a way to keep themselves warm,” Sansa responds, looking down at her own fingers.

Six weeks clean, and everything feels different this time around.

Daenerys considers her carefully, her gaze unnerving. Then she shrugs.

“Maybe you’ve got a point.”

They sit in silence, close enough that their thighs touch. They watch as the ducks reach the edge of the pond and hop out, shaking the water off and filing off one by one after their mother until they’ve all rounded the rolling green hill in the park. It’s getting dark out, but Sansa wants it to last forever.

Finally, Daenerys gets up and reaches out a pale, cold hand.

“You coming, Sans?”

Sansa exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and takes her hand, entwining their fingers.

They walk home together.


End file.
